Alistair Cooke | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/alistaircookereportingamerica
Latest news and features from theguardian.com, the world's leading liberal voiceen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2017Fri, 18 Aug 2017 05:49:36 GMT2017-08-18T05:49:36Zen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2017The Guardianhttps://assets.guim.co.uk/images/guardian-logo-rss.c45beb1bafa34b347ac333af2e6fe23f.pnghttps://www.theguardian.com
Alistair Cooke: USA versus Microsoft Corphttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/11
<p><strong>Letter from America No 2571, May 22 1998 </strong></p><p>It's not hard to imagine as the theme of a James Bond movie that a man acquires the power to control the internet worldwide. He could, before long, control the world's economies, knowledge, food, transport, all the services that more and more will be done over the internet.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/11">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:10:48 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/11Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:10:48ZAlistair Cooke: GI brides, H-bombs, Marilyn Monroe and hippieshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.letter.from.america
<p><strong>Letter from America No 1, March 24 1946</strong></p><p>After a sobering month or more in Britain, I came back to the United States with a couple of thousand GI brides. The first shock came shortly after the liner thundered its great horn as we slipped away from the dock at Southampton. All the mothers clung to the rail, and all the babies clung to their mothers and watched England slide away. Along the entire main deck of the ship the handkerchiefs fluttered in an unbroken line, like washing day in Manchester or Leeds; and then a small coastguard cutter came scuttering alongside the liner like a playful puppy. An American soldier stood at the cutter's bow, cupped his hands, and yelled, "You don't want to go back, do you?" And the young mothers and wives, weeping like mad, yelled, "No."</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.letter.from.america">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.letter.from.americaPhotograph: Bettmann/CorbisFurry friend ? Maf the dog with Marilyn Monroe in 1962. Photograph: Bettmann/CorbisPhotograph: Bettmann/CorbisFurry friend ? Maf the dog with Marilyn Monroe in 1962. Photograph: Bettmann/CorbisAlistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cook: the cost of the Vietnam warhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/3
<p><strong>Letter from America No 1000, March 24 1968</strong></p><p>I wish that this 1,000th Letter from America could be about the spring or American children, or any one of the many amiable things we've talked about down the years. But it must be about the thing that bewilders the American people like nothing else in all these 1,000 weeks. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/3">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeVietnamWorld newsAsia PacificFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/3Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: 9/11 a day of terror, did Iraq pose a threat?https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/10
<p><strong>Letter from America No 2743, September 14 2001</strong></p><p>I turned on a 24-hour news station and saw a kind of movie I detest, of the towering inferno type: a roaring image, of a monolith collapsing like a concertina in a vast plume of smoke. Just as I pressed my thumb to switch to "the real world", I caught the familiar voice of a newsman and realised I was in the appalling real world of Tuesday September 11, 2001, a date that for Americans will live in infamy, along with the memories of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, and November 22, 1963, the grievous day of President Kennedy's assassination. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/10">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/10Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: the death of Martin Luther Kinghttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/4
<p><strong>Letter from America No 1002, April 7 1968 </strong></p><p>I think we all felt guilty about his patience and enormous courage, as he walked into the valley of death so many times. He was in this sense the white man's stand-in, and braver than any of us. Because he acted out what we only thought and hoped, we feel very guilty about his murder. Guilt, as we all know, breeds anxiety, and there's no doubt that everywhere people look with bated breath toward the immediate retaliations of this early warm spring and to the possible inferno of the hot summer. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/4">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeMartin Luther KingFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/4Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: The death of Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador hotelhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/5
<p><strong>Letter from America June 13 1968 </strong></p><p>The Ambassador, a venerable hotel miles away on Wilshire Boulevard, was Senator Robert Kennedy's headquarters, and that was the place to be. We took off and, in the long driveway, lined up behind hundreds of cars containing all those sensible people who love a winner. At last, we got into the hotel lobbies and a tumult of singing, dancing, music, and cheering [in celebration of Kennedy's victory in the California Democrats' presidential primary]. Guards and cops blocked the entrance to the ballroom, and a passport and a birth certificate and, I believe, a personal recommendation from Senator Kennedy, could not have got you in. My own general press credentials were quite useless, and, screaming at each other through the din of all these happy people, my companion and I decided the whole safari had been a mistake and we would go home. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/5">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/5Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke on the death of Gary Cooperhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.america.gary.cooper
<p><strong>Guardian, May 18 1961</strong></p><p>When the word got out that Gary Cooper (who died on Saturday, aged 60) was mortally ill, a spontaneous process arose in high places not unlike the first moves to sanctify a remote peasant. The Queen of England dispatched a sympathetic cable. The president of the United States called him on the telephone. A cardinal ordered public prayers. Messages came to the actor's house in Beverly Hills from the unlikeliest fans, from foreign ministers and retired soldiers, as also from Ernest Hemingway, his old Pygmalion who had kept him in mind, through at least two novels, as the archetype of the Hemingway hero; the self-sufficient male animal, the best kind of hunter, the silent infantryman padding dutifully forward to perform the soldier's most poignant ritual in "the ultimate loneliness of contact". </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.america.gary.cooper">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.america.gary.cooperAlistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: Rosa Parks was no accidental heroinehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/9
<p><strong>Letter from America No 2627, June 18 1999 </strong></p><p>When you see on television some protest rally, I mean a spontaneous protest - people suddenly taking to the streets, brandishing fists, howling insults, waving posters - do you ever wonder who planned the spontaneousness of it all. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/9">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/9Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: Revulsion against McCarthyismhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.letter.from.america.mccarthyism.
<p><strong>The Guardian, June 12 1954 </strong></p><p>Senator Joseph McCarthy was all over the front pages again this morning, but the instinct that put him there was for once not his. It looked as if, finally, an impulse of moral revulsion had galvanised the country and braced the backbone of an incongruous variety of his victims. The Department of the Army, a middle-aged coloured woman, the spectators at a session of the Senate's permanent sub-committee on investigations, two Democratic senators, and a suddenly blithe host of columnists and radio critics were moved to furious protest at the senator's tactics and his stature.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.letter.from.america.mccarthyism.">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.letter.from.america.mccarthyism.Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: Reagan's star wars speech, playing chesshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/7
<p><strong>Letter from America No 1781, April 1 1983</strong></p><p>One day he's the screaming eagle, the next he's a purring dove. These quick-change roles can best be illustrated by two speeches the president made in the past week or two, which express a puzzling or maybe two puzzling sides of his character. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/7">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/7Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: the two sides of Bill Clinton's characterhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/8
<p><strong>Letter from America No 2585, August 28 1998 </strong></p><p>Last Wednesday evening, just when those of us whose job is to keep one eye peeled for the news feel free to close it and listen in relief to what EB White called "the most beautiful sound in America: the tinkle of ice at twilight," a bulletin came in. President Clinton would make a public speech on Thursday August 27, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Let me put you in the mood - the very wary, watchful, the almost morbidly suspenseful mood in which we heard about that coming speech. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/8">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/8Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZA timeline of Alistair Cooke's lifehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.america.timeline
<p><strong>Nov 20 1908:</strong> Born Alfred Cooke in Salford, Lancs, to Mary Elizabeth ("Cissie") Byme and Samuel Cooke, iron fitter and salesman, Methodist lay preacher</p><p><strong>1920:</strong> Blackpool secondary school</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.america.timeline">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.america.timelineGuardian Staff2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: Coming through the JFK assassinationhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/1
<p><strong>Letter No 799, December 29 1963 </strong></p><p>The carols, wrote an old New York writer, have not drowned out the requiem. I guess that puts it about as simply and truly as it can be said. But they made a brave try, once the mournful 30 days was over and the flags were hoisted to the top of their masts. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/1">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/1Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: 1952, a year of no lynchings in Americahttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.letter.from.america1
<p><strong>The Guardian, January 8 1953 </strong></p><p>This year has been a harrowing one in America in many ways, but in one respect it shook off at least an infamous if waning habit. It was the first year on record that there was no lynching in the United States. The good word was reported last night by the Tuskegee Institute, the negro college established by the state of Alabama in 1881, which has kept records of all lynchings and race riots since the year after its founding.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.letter.from.america1">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.letter.from.america1Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke on the Cuban missile crisishttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.cuban.missile.crisis
<p><strong>Letter No 741, October 28 1962</strong></p><p>Today was one of those New York days that are almost as crystalline in January as they are in June or October. Like many millions of other people, I put the clock back last evening to justify staying up later than usual. A couple of friends came in, the man a member of the United Nations secretariat, and between bouts of personal talk we tuned in the bulletins every half-hour in the hope (which seemed to be draining away) that the United States would not feel it essential to use force to destroy the Russian missile bases in Cuba. More photographs were coming in to the Pentagon and being rushed to the White House, and they showed that way down below, Russian technicians and their Cuban help had been working overtime on Friday and Saturday to finish the bases and mount the missiles and confront the United States with a dreadful accomplished fact, which the president in the long, long week behind us had laboured to thwart. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.cuban.missile.crisis">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.cuban.missile.crisisAlistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: Richard Nixon; hype; letter 2000, OJ Simpsonhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/6
<p><strong>Letter No 1331, August 16 1974</strong></p><p>The writers of the Constitution devised, to their satisfaction, a recipe for removing a president. And, after 187 years of all sorts of presidents and every sort of turmoil, including a civil war, the provision was used. It took two years from a short report in the papers about some comic burglary in Washington to the blinding headlines: "Nixon Resigns". Two years for the vast and alarming literature of Watergate to reach a single recording of a few quick telephone conversations between President Nixon and his closest adviser, HR Haldeman, in which he expressed his alarm that the FBI was already on to the burglary [at the Democratic national committee's offices in the Watergate building in Washington] and might trace it to the White House ... The charge of dynamite in this conversation was the simple fact that it took place on June 23 1972, only six days after the burglary had taken place.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/6">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeRichard NixonUS politicsFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/6Alistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00ZSusan Cooke Kittredge on her father, Alistair Cookehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/2
Why did America captivate Alistair Cooke for a lifetime? Because, his daughter Susan believes, its vitality was the saving of a fatalist<p>The sun shone especially bright, for my father, one day in September of 1974. His address to a joint session of Congress in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the first Continental Congress, in Philadelphia, was certainly one of the great moments of his life. Winston Churchill and Lafayette were the only other people not born in America who had been so honoured. </p><p>In looking back on it, I try to pinpoint why it was so noteworthy and moving. It was noteworthy because he was clearly nervous; rarely did he seem especially agitated before speaking engagements. In this instance, however, we just tried to stay out of his way. It was not noteworthy because he did an excellent job; most of the time he did. For all who attended, the air was charged, the moment extraordinary, the well of the chamber commanding. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/2">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/2Photograph: APPhotograph: APSusan Cooke Kittredge2008-10-03T23:01:00ZDavid Dimbleby on Alistair Cookehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke
<p>This article has been taken down due to web rights expiry.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cookeDavid Dimbleby2008-10-03T23:01:00ZAlistair Cooke: America in spacehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.america.space
<p><strong>The Guardian, February 22 1962</strong></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.america.space">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAlistair CookeFri, 03 Oct 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/alistair.cooke.america.spaceAlistair Cooke2008-10-03T23:01:00Z